Powered by the sun's rays
Local group gets international award for solar cooker that dishes up cheaper
meals, safer water and cleaner air
By Stephen Magagnini -- Bee Staff Writer
Published 12:01 am PDT Tuesday, August 22, 2006
The little NGO that could, Sacramento's Solar Cookers International, will take
the global stage Friday in Florence, Italy.
The nongovernmental organization, which is dedicated to saving the world with
solar power, will receive an award from the World Renewable Energy Congress.
Scott Haapala of the congress said the award, sponsored by the European
Union, recognizes the nonprofit group's "outstanding achievement and vision" in
helping Africans protect their environment and liberating them from the
crippling task of gathering firewood and cooking over a smoky fire.
The
secret of the group's success is the "CooKit," a 3-by-4-foot piece of cardboard
lined with aluminum foil that harnesses the sun's rays to cook food and
pasteurize water. About 90,000 "CooKits" are heating up in Africa, where they
are being manufactured and sold for $8 or $9, said Pascale Dennery, the group's
technical assistance director.
The group has helped introduce 500,000 solar cookers to 25 nations where
people spend half their $1-a-day wages to buy firewood to cook their meals, said
Bob Metcalf, a microbiologist who co-founded the group in 1987. Solar cookers
allow them to spend that money on food instead of firewood, said Metcalf, who
teaches at California State University, Sacramento.
Metcalf says he hopes the award will get him 30 minutes with Bill Gates or
some other investor to spread the gospel of the CooKit, which could be used by
"2.5 billion people today" who rely on wood, charcoal or animal dung to cook
meals.
Smoke-related diseases kill more people annually than tuberculosis and
malaria combined, Dennery said, and Africans have killed each other over
firewood.
Metcalf also invented the Water Pasteurization Indicator -- a reusable sealed
test tube with wax that melts when food or water has been pasteurized at 149
degrees Fahrenheit. "It takes about 90 minutes in the sun," he said.
About 5,000 of the tubes are in use in Africa, Dennery said.
The group's success has been achieved on an annual budget of $800,000, 80
percent of it from individual donors. "People who have lots of resources who
want to do good haven't discovered us yet. This could be multiplied 100,000
times around the world right now," Metcalf said.
Calling himself "an ambassador for the sun," Metcalf is sure he could
convince Gates "of the enormous good this tiny organization in Sacramento could
do to make an impact on the poorest people in the world."
For more information, go to
www.solarcookers.org
or
www.WREC2006.com
About the writer:
|